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A fascinating memoir of life as a lady's maid in a big house in the 1930s, covering the beauty of the house, the housing of royals escaping the Nazis, the hard work of staff, and the experience of joining the army to serve a Countess

Hilda Newman was a maid to Lady Coventry at the Worcestershire stately home of Croome Court in the 1930s. In her fascinating memoir of life below the stairs (as well as glimpses from inside the big house), she reveals what it was like living and working in the 18th Century Neo-Palladian mansion surrounded by parkland landscaped by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. During World War II Croome Court housed the exiled Dutch Royal Family, who escaped the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. It was also the top-secret RAF base Defford, where radar was developed and repairs were carried out on aircraft fighting in the Battle of Britain. Hilda remembers life both upstairs and down, from the grand long gallery designed by Robert Adam and the tapestry room (since removed and transferred to the Metropolitan Museum in New York), to the hard labor demanded of serving staff and what it was like in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women's branch of the British Army, which she joined to serve the Countess in 1940.

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It is the journey of a princess and a cowboy. The princess, who is destined to become a great queen for her kingdom. A time where many kingdoms fight over an absolute power that lies beneath a cavern filled with dragons. Many have dared to grab that absolute power, but many have failed. She as a child dared to grab this power, a power in the form of a key, and she would gain this absolute power later on as a young woman.

However, she takes upon a curse from that absolute power, in the shape of a hand. Through her recklessness and ambitious needs, she uplifts the curse to not only herself, but the curse interwines to the very foundation of the world. Her curse impacts not only her destiny, but the world as well for the next centuries to come.

It is until she meets a cowboy many years later, who is living in the sins of his past, that hope is brought upon her. The stranger also has that opportunity, the opportunity to make things right and gain peace within himself with the princess, who can finally end her curse. However, together they also set out to bring an end to the curse that the world is living in.